One week after lawmakers voted to approve a bill to dissolve the Knesset, potentially triggering slightly earlier elections, coalition whip Ofir Katz (Likud) on Wednesday announced that his Knesset House Committee will discuss the legislation next Monday before immediately sending it to the plenum for the first of three readings needed for it to pass into law.
The legislation passed its first reading 110-0 last week but was not immediately advanced further, with the coalition initially appearing to be in no rush to pass it. In response, Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari wrote to Katz yesterday demanding that the bill be immediately placed on the committee’s agenda.
The decision to pass the bill came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s erstwhile allies in the United Torah Judaism party announced that they would push to dissolve the Knesset over the coalition’s failure to pass legislation codifying military conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
Their decision was made after Netanyahu told Haredi MKs that the coalition currently doesn’t have the votes to pass the draft exemption legislation, and reportedly asked them to agree to shelve the bill until after the elections.
In response to UTJ’s move to dissolve the Knesset and in an effort to control both the legislative process and the timing of the elections, Katz submitted his own legislation calling for new elections to be held.
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The dissolution bill — which was cosponsored by lawmakers from UTJ, Shas, New Hope, Religious Zionism, and the Otzma Yehudit parties — does not specify an election date — instead stipulating that it be set by the Knesset House Committee on a day no less than three months from the legislation’s final approval.
A plenum session at the assembly hall of the Knesset on May 27, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Elections must be held within five months of the law’s passing, which would mean mid- to late-October at the latest. The Knesset’s ultra-Orthodox parties reportedly favor an election date in early September. Elections must, in any case, be held by October 27.
Netanyahu has reportedly urged the ultra-Orthodox parties not to force early elections in September, warning in private conversations that such a timeline would “endanger” the right-wing bloc’s chances of winning.
In an effort to win the Haredim over and avoid a September election date, Netanyahu placed the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox draft exemption bill back on the parliamentary agenda. Haredi lawmakers rejected the latest draft of the controversial legislation.
The legislation — which would ostensibly increase military conscription in the Haredi community, but ultimately enable continued exemptions for full-time yeshiva students — is widely seen as legally dubious and laden with loopholes.
The bill has generated intense resistance even among members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, and was briefly taken off the table in March with the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Despite not passing the draft exemption bill, however, members of Netanyahu’s coalition on Wednesday did vote in favor of the preliminary reading of a bill restoring daycare subsidies for the children of draft evaders, a key Haredi priority.
The legislation, sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, stipulates that only the employment or educational status of a child’s mother will be taken into account when deciding on a child’s eligibility for subsidies.
A water cannon is used against ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, amid a protest against the jailing of Haredi draft evaders, in Jerusalem, March 22, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
In August 2024, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ordered the Labor Ministry to cut daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who disobey military draft orders. She explained that since the High Court has ruled that members of the ultra-Orthodox community must be inducted into the army, there was no longer a legal basis for the state to fund daycare for those who don’t comply.
According to Hebrew media reports, Gafni, the chairman of UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction, told Netanyahu that his party would vote in favor of establishing a state commission of inquiry into October 7 unless the coalition supported the bill. Netanyahu’s government has steadfastly refused to establish a state commission of inquiry, the only available independent public forum with investigative powers, into the October 7 disaster.
While pushing forward with the bill to dissolve the Knesset, the coalition is also speeding ahead with a series of controversial moves targeting the media, including legislation that would place the Kan public broadcaster’s budget under government control and split the role of the attorney general.
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